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Ever since Frank\u2019s wife passed away a few months ago, he\u2019s barely getting by. His wife used to help with chores and errands, but now Frank struggles just getting to the store because his diabetes causes neuropathic pain that makes it impossible to drive. Because of this, his house is a mess, his medications unfilled, and worst of all, his children live far away, meaning there\u2019s no one to share in his grief. One day, overpowered by his loneliness and his worsening health, Frank doubles over in the shower from a heart attack.<\/p>\n Luckily, Frank isn\u2019t harmed\u2014because Frank isn\u2019t even a real person. Instead, he\u2019s the central character in the Frank Lab, a virtual reality experience designed by Embodied Labs, a company that uses immersive training to help healthcare providers empathize with patients.<\/p>\n Empathy is essential in healthcare, allowing clinicians to communicate successfully with patients and understand their needs, and research has linked clinician empathy with higher patient satisfaction, better health outcomes, and fewer medical errors. Unfortunately, studies also show that empathy tends to decrease during medical school, as fact-based learning and high-stakes testing drive students\u2019 attention away from patients\u2019 subjective experiences. \u201cYou\u2019re just in survival mode,\u201d explains Riham Alieldin, a physician and medical educator at the University of Rochester.<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Virtual reality isn\u2019t always guaranteed to increase empathy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The question of whether empathy is a trainable<\/a> skill<\/a> is the subject of substantial debate<\/a>, but either way, most experts agree that medical schools\u2019 usual teaching methods don\u2019t tend to work as well for such soft, context-based skills. \u201cAnybody in health professions education learns best by doing, by experiencing, by having that kinesthetic awareness,\u201d says Marilyn Gugliucci, a professor at the University of New England\u2019s College of Osteopathic Medicine. Virtual reality helps create this awareness, immersing students in embodied experiences that their patients might have. \u201cIt just tricks your mind in a different way,\u201d explains Alieldin.<\/p>\n In 2024, Alieldin led a study<\/a> using the Frank Lab to expose 19 first-year medical students to the overlapping challenges older adults face with social isolation and declining health. \u201cWhat happened is, the students would come in, they put on the headset, and they become the patient,\u201d says Alieldin. Instead of just hearing about Frank\u2019s troubles, they could actually sit in his cluttered living room and open his unstocked fridge.<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Alieldin\u2019s team used the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, a questionnaire designed specifically for healthcare professionals, to measure students\u2019 empathy both before and after the intervention, finding that, on average, students\u2019 empathy increased significantly following their time in the Frank Lab. Interviews with participants also revealed that they felt newly aware of empathy\u2019s importance in medical care, along with the everyday challenges faced by older adults. The majority also said they felt a deep emotional connectedness to Frank, as if they had \u201cbecome\u201d him. \u201cIt was very powerful,\u201d says Alieldin. A few students cried.<\/p>\n Gugliucci and other researchers at the University of New England found similar results<\/a> when testing out Embodied Labs\u2019 Alfred Lab, which lets users experience sensory deficits firsthand. For example, the lab simulates macular degeneration, a type of vision loss that prevents people from seeing what\u2019s directly ahead of them, by placing a large block dot in the center of the screen. Forced to turn their heads to see what was in front of them, Gugliucci says, students became frustrated\u2014and with this, viscerally aware of how exasperating the condition can be.<\/p>\n Still, virtual reality isn\u2019t always guaranteed to increase empathy. \u201cA lot of the current designs don\u2019t utilize it in a way that\u2019s going to work,\u201d says social scientist Alison Jane Martingano, who has done extensive research on virtual reality and empathy. As she explains, exercises that merely arouse emotion may provoke emotional empathy, or the ability to feel what someone else does, but what clinicians need is cognitive empathy, which allows them to make sense of patients\u2019 mental states from a distance. \u201cWe don\u2019t want our doctor to get super upset when we\u2019re in pain,\u201d Martingano says, \u201cbecause that would not be good for us, or the doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Realism isn\u2019t actually what makes virtual reality powerful.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Plus, sudden bursts of feeling tend to dissipate just as quickly, meaning that interventions focused on emotion don\u2019t typically produce lasting changes in behavior. For example, Martingano conducted a study in 2022<\/a> where participants viewed footage of child refugees through a virtual reality headset before being asked to donate to the United Nations International Children\u2019s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). While measures of emotional empathy increased after the intervention, suggesting that the footage stirred participants\u2019 emotions, they were no more likely to donate than those from a control group that didn\u2019t view the footage.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t mean virtual reality is hopeless for bolstering empathy\u2014it just means interventions need to target cognitive empathy by forcing participants to work what Martingano calls their \u201cempathy muscles.\u201d As Martingano explains, perspective-swapping exercises like Alieldin\u2019s show potential because they compel students to work out a fictional person\u2019s emotions on their own. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially doing what a novel does, in the sense that it\u2019s asking you to take the perspective of the narrator, but it\u2019s not telling you how they feel,\u201d says Martingano. Alieldin\u2019s team also followed the Frank Lab with a debriefing session where students reflected on what they\u2019d learned and how they would apply it to clinical practice later on, which added an additional level of deliberate thinking to the experience.<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Alieldin\u2019s findings suggest that the Frank Lab had more than just a momentary impact\u2014when interviewed six months later, most participants reported that they still worked to apply what they\u2019d learned in real patient encounters. Some, for example, used the experience as a reminder to ask in-depth questions about patients\u2019 lives or to take note of subtle cues in patients\u2019 behavior. But these details were self-reported and so could have been influenced by social desirability bias.<\/p>\n Martingano stresses that realism isn\u2019t actually what makes virtual reality powerful. Just as we can become engrossed by powerful novels or works of theater, an immersive experience that tells a truly engaging story will have a much greater impact than one centered around convincing graphics. In fact, Gugliucci\u2019s team actually found that students\u2019 empathy increased just as much when the Alfred Lab was streamed to entire classes of students as it did when they used virtual reality.<\/p>\n For this reason, Martingano cautions against treating virtual reality as the only option, since this could dissuade medical schools who can\u2019t afford the expensive technology from trying out more accessible options. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything magical about the technology,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially just another tool in the toolbox.\u201d ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Enjoying\u00a0 Nautilus<\/a>? Subscribe to our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lead image: AKIO75 \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n
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